


Courting Rituals

by TenSpencerRiedPlease



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies)
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Courting Rituals, Humor, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 00:20:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18727846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TenSpencerRiedPlease/pseuds/TenSpencerRiedPlease
Summary: Bucky stares into his locker as some random alpha prattles on next to him about shit he doesn’t care about. He sighs and turns to her, “want to know how to lose about fifteen pounds instantly?” he asks and she frowns.“Uh, sure?” she asks more than states.“Get into a car accident and lose an arm,” he tells her.





	Courting Rituals

**Author's Note:**

> Have a fun high school ABO AU in which Bucky is a tired omega who’s kind of tired of people hitting on him and Tony happens to be the only one who gives him good courting gifts! This was supposed to be a drabble but ended up longer so I posted it here and on my Tumblr.

Bucky stares into his locker as some random alpha prattles on next to him about shit he doesn’t care about. He sighs and turns to her, “want to know how to lose about fifteen pounds instantly?” he asks and she frowns.

“Uh, sure?” she asks more than states.

“Get into a car accident and lose an arm,” he tells her. It has the desired result of making her give him a confused and also slightly grossed out look as she walks away.

Beside him he hears a snort and he turns to find some other god damn alpha beside him and honestly how many really feel the need to try their luck today? Can’t they take a hint? “Nice. Should have told her to lose her head though. I mean, you’d have to sacrifice the fact that you lost an arm in a car accident once but it’d still be funny. I could make you a new arm though,” the guy says and Bucky laughs.

“I can do without some weird straw arm, thanks.” Its more polite than he feels like being but he’s pretty sure laughing at the guy’s suggestion is harsh enough. Doesn’t seem to fluster him any and Bucky can’t tell if that’s good or bad at the moment.

“It wouldn’t be straw, but that’s cute. Or disturbing, depends on if someone has handed you a straw arm before.” Bucky doesn’t answer and the guy winces. “Fuck, people around here have no idea how to give courting gifts,” he mumbles and he walks off. Bucky frowns because that’s the first time someone _else’s_  weird behavior managed to get someone to leave him be. He doesn’t think too long on it though, content to go to class instead of worrying himself with it.

*

Tony’s had the design half made for awhile and he figured the gift was original enough to make him not look like a fucking idiot but apparently some other tool bag went and made poor Bucky a straw arm so he automatically looks better in comparison. Still kind of a weird gift but Tony figures if nothing else its practical and he think practicality is a useful thing to consider when gift giving. Also, without knowing Bucky all that well its kind of all he has to go on.

Bucky looks baffled though, but not the same kind of baffled he is when he gets jewelry, which Tony doesn’t get because he’s never seen Bucky wear any jewelry. Rhodey’s always annoyed that no one gets him any jewelry but mostly because he’d pawn it for money so he can buy stuff he actually wants. Probably another model plane not that Tony would ever tell anyone sniffing around for that information that.

“You made me an arm,” he says, sounding more confused than he looks.

Tony has no idea if this is a good or bad reaction. “Um, yeah. Said I would. And its not straw,” he adds, attempting to make a joke but it falls flat.

“Its metal,” Bucky says, ever the astute one.

Yeah, this has gone terribly. Tony shrugs a little, “um. Better building material? I’ll uh, leave you to it,” he tells Bucky before scurrying off.

Rhodey’s face tells him everything he needs to know when he gets back to his own locker space. He settles a hand on Tony’s shoulder, “I mean, you tried man.”

“Guess the good news is that he didn’t quote Charles Manson?” Tony asks more than states but Rhodey looks like he feels even more sorry for him at that.

“Tones, that should probably be a given.”

Okay, maybe that’s a point but Bucky _does_  manage to pull the weirdest quotes from the even more fucked up sources just to get people to give him a break and maybe not getting a weird line from a cult leader is a good thing. But maybe given Rhodey’s pitying look it isn’t an improvement at all.

*

Bucky has no idea how the arm is doing any of that but holy _shit_  it works mostly like a normal arm. Grasping stuff is a little difficult because he doesn’t know how to control strength given that his flesh arm has limits this one doesn’t but still he didn’t think it was more than a stunt. He only tried it on for shits and giggles.

“Hey,” he says, finding Tony in the back of the library with, of all things, college math texts around him. Bucky frowns, “what’s with the higher curriculum?” he asks.

Tony sighs, shooting a copy of Macbeth an offended look. “Technically I could have graduated high school years ago but English continues to fuck me over. And I need a couple other credits. But I’m good at math so,” he says, gesturing to his math texts.

Bucky mostly sees letters and his last brain cell checks out because fuck that shit. “Uh huh. How’d you get this arm to do these things? Its like its reading my mind,” he says, lifting his hand and looking at it. Freaks him out still when he lifts it because he hasn’t had a left arm in a year and when it shows up in his field of vision he jumps out of surprise.

“It kind of is-” Tony starts but Bucky cuts him off.

“My arm is psychic?” he asks and why did he have to go say that? The _one_  time he manages to not get a shitty gift from someone who wasn’t at all pushy about it and he _had_  to go say something weird.

Tony laughs though, “I... well no, that’s not technically how it works but I’ll spare you the long winded scientific explanation because a psychic arm is more fun.”

Fuck, Bucky doesn’t know what to do here now. He used to be kind of good at this but that car accident fucked him up pretty good and now his best bet is to get people do go away because he doesn’t _want_  to date anyone. Sometimes he missed the dates and courting were fun because now its a hassle for him because of the newfound anxiety.

“Thanks for the arm, it freaks me out when I see it because I forget that I used to have an arm but this is neat,” he says and immediately flees because that is by far the _worst_  reaction he could have spit out.

*

Sure social media has its drawbacks but Tony _did_  manage to glean a bunch of information from Bucky’s Facebook so there’s that even if he hates Zuckerberg. Still, every troll has its use so when he shows up beside Bucky’s locker he feels relatively confident in himself at least until he gets a fucking death glare. He stops for a moment, glancing behind himself for some stupid reason before making peace with the fact that Bucky was, in fact, glaring at him in particular. “I can go,” he says, waving a hand around.

Thankfully Bucky relaxes and sighs. “Sorry, I’ve had a bad morning,” he says, picking up the fucking _ugliest_  brooch Tony has ever seen with his thumb and forefinger in disgust and holding it up like a totem of annoyance. Which Tony supposes it is.

“Good news Buck, that’s expensive. Faberge. From the looks of it you could probably get a couple grand for that,” he says and Bucky stares at it him like he’s nuts.

“For tis ugly as fuck beetle looking thing?” he asks and Tony shrugs.

“Rich people like ugly shit.” As a rich person he feels he’s qualified to talk on the subject and frankly he doesn’t get the obsession people have with the tackiest stuff. Even his mom has a weird attachment to ugly things.

Bucky looks back to the ugly beetle brooch. “I think you telling me this isn’t a worthless hideous trinket is better than the actual gift,” he says before he tosses it back in his locker. “I assume you come bearing gifts too?” he asks more than states. He looks tired of it and frankly Tony doesn’t blame him, omegas seem to constantly be drown in attention that betas are jealous of and alphas who suck whine about because why do they have to buy all the gifts? Tony might think that has merit if it wasn’t for the fact that alphas _started_  that trend and continue to enforce it with much more attention than any omega does. Actually omegas seem to avoid the attention but the pretty ones don’t get a choice. Hence Bucky.

He moves a little closer and hands Bucky his next gift. Bucky takes the tickets and his eyebrows go up in surprise, “Rocky Horror tickets,” he says, shocked.

“Yeah, uh. The second one is for whoever. Steve I assume. Musicals aren’t my thing,” Tony says. He watched it for reference and honestly Bucky has some... weird taste. Online research tells him its a classic but its definitely not Tony’s taste.

Bucky frowns, “you gave me tickets to a show you don’t even expect me to take you to?” he asks and Tony frowns.

“Is that not normal? I watched the movie but like... I don’t get the appeal. Why would I go to something that doesn’t really interest me when you have friends that you'd probably rather take?” If he got tickets to something he liked he’d take Rhodey over anyone else unless whatever it was interested Pepper more, then he’d take her.

“I... wow okay. Thanks,” Bucky says, smiling down at the tickets.

*

Rhodey stares across the parking lot and Tony follows his gaze, frowning. “She’s a lesbian, Rhodey,” he tells him. Rhodey turns to give him a dirty look.

“What do you know, Stark?” he asks and Pepper snorts from the other side of the car.

“More than you because he’s right, Carol is clearly gay as hell and in love with Maria. I don’t know if they know it yet though. What do you think?” she asks him and Tony doesn’t know why. He sucks at this stuff.

“I think Carol knows, but Maria is clueless.”

Pepper nods, looking back over to them talking together. Carol has her head thrown back, laughing at something Maria has said. “You guys are wrong,” he tells them but he has no confidence in his voice so Tony knows Rhodey knows that he and Pepper are right. “So how’s the Bucky thing going?” he asks instead, changing the subject. Pepper looks interested too and Tony shrugs.

“I assume okay. I haven’t found any of my stuff in the garbage so that’s nice.” Pretty sure that brooch would have ended up in the trash if Tony hadn’t told him  it was worth money.

“You gave him an arm, how’s he supposed to throw that out?” Rhodey asks and Tony squints.

“Trash cans can hold arms, Rhodey. Serial killers occasionally leave them in there.” Rhodey rolls his eyes at him and that’s fucking rude, Tony’s right and they all know it.

“Well that’s good news! The not throwing out your gifts thing, not the serial killer arm thing obviously” Pepper adds when she realizes how that sounds. “Maybe if he agrees to a date you’ll shut up about him.”

Tony gives her a dirty look because he doesn't even talk about Bucky that much. “Yeah, you’re always on about him,” Rhodey says, happy to latch on to anyone but him being made fun of. Tony gives him a dirty look too. “Don’t look at us like that, its not our fault you never stop talking about him.”

“I don’t talk about him that much,” Tony mumbles.

*

Bucky starts looking forward to Tony’s gifts because they’re always something that _Bucky_  would like, not something shiny, or something his suitor would like but he doesn’t care about. The gifts show that Tony pays attention to what he says given that he mentioned liking Harley Quinn once and Tony got him a bunch of comics about her. Better than any of the other stuff he got anyway and even if he spends a lot, and Bucky is sure he _does_ , he’s not showy about it. Or pushy and Bucky is especially fond of that.

Some alphas, they go out of their way to give people who didn’t ask for them gifts and then get mad when omegas don’t respond the way they like. Tony clearly wants his affections, but he never really pushes it. So when Tony hands him a gift card to a book store Bucky calls him back. “How do you know I read?” he asks and Tony snorts.

“There’s at least three new books in your locker every week. Usually on cults or serial killers and you have weird interests. Was gunna grab a book on something you read about, but then I realized I have no idea what you’ve already read and you obviously have that information so I figured a gift card might be more useful to you than my stab in the dark.”

A gift card would be more useful to him. Tony isn’t exactly wrong about that, but the fact that he knows anything at all about Bucky’s interests is surprising in its own right. “Do you have any plans tonight?” he asks and Tony smiles brightly for a moment before ehe pulls back a little.

“Not really. I mean I was probably going to watch Star Wars for the millionth time but other than that, no.”

“I’ve never seen Star Wars,” Bucky admits and he laughs when Tony appears to short circuit. “What? I have better things to do. I watch a lot of documentaries,” he says in his own defense.

“Okay but like. _Star Wars_ ,” Tony says meaningfully.

Bucky shakes his head, smiling. “Fine, since you’ve taken such an interest in what I like I’ll watch Star Wars with you but be warned that I don’t trust people who give me bad movie recommendations.”

“Star Wars is great, you’ll love it if for no other reason than weird looking aliens and totally cheesy graphics compared to what people can do now.”

**Author's Note:**

> [My writing Tumblr](https://tenspencerriedplease.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Fun Fact: the one who got Bucky the ugly beetle brooch was Justin Hammer lol.


End file.
